Salad Dressing Explains ... Everything

The Washington Post's wonkblog uses salad dressing sales today as a clever way to understand the economy.

I think it also explains the news business.

Essentially, people are migrating to either the cheapest store-brand salad dressings or the high-end stuff, leaving the middlebrow brands suffering. Now think news -- as in the demise of middlebrow news. Some brands are doing nicely (think The Economist, The Atlantic, the TMZs of the world, or BuzzFeed or HuffPo).  Some brands are struggling, as in most major metro papers, the very essence, if not definition, of middlebrow news.

News as salad dressing.  Major metros are Kraft, but folks are buying either the Kroger/Publix brand, or the high-end yuppie stuff (whatever the hell that is).